This certainly has been an amazing week for all the wrong reasons when it comes to NASCAR and its various media components. Please feel free to add your comments to this post on any of the topics listed above. Thanks again for the kind words about the Rowdy.com podcast, always fun to work with Buck and Bass.

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10 comments:

I just listened to you on Rowdy. As much as I like you JD, I hope you're wrong about Marty Reid. I want AB to be in the booth. I think AB would mesh better with DJ & AP. Plus, how many more years is Allen going to be punished and not be in the booth? Does he not want the job? Inquiring minds want to know.

I have a question for you. Now that Petty Ent is no longer racing, are you going to change your background color? Or keep it blue in his honor? One more thing, post a picture of yourself, please? I need a visual to go with your voice. Thanks.

JD - your interview was super. I had never heard those CRAZY guys before. Reading the Houston Chronicle we never find out any news about Nascar so these websites are really needed. Even when David Starr, a Houston racer, wins a race the Chronicle never prints one word about it. Keep up the good work.

I agree with Dot. I like you JD, but I hope your wrong about the whole Marty Reid thing. ESPN should havre snagged Bob Jenkins while they still had him. It appeas hes going to VERSUS. If ESPN moves Marty Reid to the booth, it will be the same outcome as when they put Todd Harris in the IRL booth in place of Paul Page. You have to use someone already in the NASCAR family, like Allen Bestwick.

P.S. - Do we know when ESPN usually makes announcements about next season?

With maybe 1 exception, the reporting on the Petty Enterprises situation has been so uniformly mediocre that it is not clear to me whether there will or will not be a "Petty 43" racing in 2009. In fact the most recent statements I have seen attributed to Boston Ventures indicated to me that there would be a Petty car racing in 2009, even if just a 1 car team. I certainly could have missed it, but I've heard nothing on ESPN on TV about PE at all and, thru Friday, I found nothing really informative on EESPN's web site. I wonder whether the reporting about PE has been so sparse because the parties involved (Boston Ventures & Gillett) are "outsiders" and relatively new to the sport - and thus are not likely to speak to the media off the record.

I do doubt he could have found out anything, but unfortunate timing for Mulhern to be off the beat, since W-S is maybe 40-45 minutes from Level Cross.

We seem to live in an era where the public demands that reporters "give" them news.

These are trying times. All negotiations are sensitive and any mistep can cause problems in the contract. Zucker and Petty are both trying to keep the value of PE as high as possible.

No news is not a bad rap on reporters, it's a signal how close to the vest these negotiationa are.

I think that Richard Petty deserves the respect of all to be able to announce the news when he is good and ready. I personally thought it was a disgrace when SI blindsided him in NY and demanded answers.

Anon 7:15PM, yes, you are correct about the possible merger, etc of PE and GEM. However, there are many aspects of what else may or may not be going on at PE and GEM that the press has ignored.

Does GEM have a sponsor for the 10 car? Will the 10 car run in 2009, at least at the beginning, if it does not have sponsorship lined up?

Jenna Fryer's AP article keeps floating around entitled "Cash-strapped Petty Enterprises....." - but whether or not PE really is cash-strapped is never discussed in the article.

The lack of news does not mean there is none to be learned. I believe you have more faith in the press than I do. Given all the possible sources for leaks, it does fascinate me that no sources have been quoted.